Adelante Care Institute

Understanding the Nature and Development of Scientific Knowledge .This strand focuses attention on students’ understanding of science as a way of knowing: the nature of scientific knowledge, the nature of theory and evidence in science, and the sources for, justification of, and certainty of scientific knowledge. It also includes students’ reflection on the status of their own knowledge. This strand includes developing a conception of “doing science” that extends beyond experiment to include modeling, systematic observation, and historical reconstruction. It also includes an awareness that science entails the search for core explanatory constructs and connections between them.

More specifically, students must recognize that there may be multiple interpretations of the same phenomena. They must understand that explanations are increasingly valuable as they account for the available evidence more completely, and as they generate new, productive research questions. Students should be able to step back from evidence or an explanation and consider whether another interpretation of a particular finding is plausible with respect to existing scientific evidence and other knowledge that they hold with confidence. This entails embracing a point of view as possible and worthy of further investigation, but subject to careful scrutiny and consideration of alternative perspectives (which may be deemed more valuable in the end). Participate Productively in Scientific Practices and Discourse. To understand science, one must use science and do so in a manner that reflects the values of scientific practice. Participation is premised on a view that science and scientific knowledge are valuable and interesting, seeing oneself as an effective learner and participant in science, and the belief that steady effort in understanding science pays off. These attitudes toward science and science learning develop as a consequence of students’ experience of educational, social, and cultural environments.